TOM HIGGINS' SCUFFS: Northwest Flight 255

EDITOR'S NOTE: Tom Higgins vividly recalls a race day in Michigan that was marred by tragedy, but it wasn't on the track. As important as racing is to all of us, his story just as vividly reminds of us matters far more important. 

By TOM HIGGINS

I can imagine once again the wreaths out there on the grassy knoll, ribbons billowing softly in a slight summer breeze.

The spot is on Middlebelt Road, just a mile or so from Detroit Metro Airport.

It’s where Northwest Airlines Flight 255 went down on Sunday, Aug. 17, 1987, killing 154 of the 155 people on board. Two persons on the ground also died.

Dozens of horrified witnesses either saw the crash or experienced what happened in the immediate aftermath. I was among the latter.

Along with fellow motorsports reporters Steve Waid and Gary McCredie, both then with a publication called Winston Cup Scene, I had driven to the airport area from the Champion 400 at Michigan International Speedway. We had watched Bill Elliott outrun Dale Earnhardt for the victory a couple hours earlier.

Just after we checked into a newly opened motel to await an early flight to Charlotte the next day, the world seemed to explode 200 yards away.

I thought that 30 years of covering stock car racing at the time had left me somewhat jaded to the sight of sudden death. I had seen several drivers and a couple crewmen, some of them close acquaintances, die violently on race tracks.

I was wrong.

Nothing had prepared me for a tragedy of this magnitude.

Scenes and incidents from that sad Sabbath evening haunted me for months.

And each year, on the anniversary of the awful accident, I remember it all over again. That and the wreaths that have been placed on the grassy knoll each August at this time, always the same week as a major NASCAR event at MIS.

I recall a Northwest Airlines crew — two men, four women — who were at the motel desk checking in as I sat in the lobby. Suddenly, they obviously heard the plane struggling to get airborne and began screaming.

I recall, an instant later, an explosion louder than anything I’ve ever heard. And then a fireball flashing by the motel door.

The concussion was so great that it seemed the motel might have been hit.

I recall running outside just behind that flight crew, and being stunned by the sight of thick black smoke down the street and the heavy smell of jet fuel. Secondary explosions boomed every few seconds.

There was mass confusion among those of us watching in horror from the motel lawn.

Had two planes collided in the gathering darkness of a fierce thunderstorm? What airline was involved?

Steve and Gary joined me outside. We shared a chilling, mind-numbing thought: Was it a plane headed to Charlotte, loaded with NASCAR drivers, team members and others connected to Winston Cup Series racing?

"It was a single plane, a big airliner," said an ashen-faced woman, still holding the suitcase she was taking from the trunk of a car when the plane went over her head. "It’s left wing dipped down and hit the building across the street."

We turned to see that flames were licking the roof the of the Avis Rental Car building on the other side of Middlebelt Road.

Suddenly, sirens wailed and firetrucks from the airport came speeding by. The response time was incredible, just 4 or 5 minutes.

Police cars and other emergency vehicles followed.

By now the Northwest flight crew that had been checking in had hustled into a shuttle bus. They were heading back to the airport terminal. The women were sobbing and the men grim-faced.

"It was one of their airline’s planes," someone said.

I rushed back into the motel to call my paper, The Charlotte Observer, to tell editors about the crash. The power had been knocked out, so phones in the rooms weren’t working, but two pay phones in the lobby were. Knowing there would be news flashes on TV, I also phoned my daughter to tell her I was okay.

I went back outside and saw that a new procession of emergency vehicles was passing by. They were ambulances, dozens of them, confirming the worst fears.

Their flashing lights added to an already eerie, surrealistic scene.

Policemen and deputy sheriffs set up a road block right in front of the motel, turning the curious away.

"Who would want to see such a gruesome sight?" I wondered.

Some insisted they had a right to go to the crash, including a guy that came down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. Cursing the cops, he reluctantly turned around and went away.

Another ghoul of a guy showed up on a bicycle. He ignored the officers and kept pedaling down Middlebelt Road. They pulled him from the bike and somewhat less than gently put him in a squad car and took him away in handcuffs.

Rain started to fall, so Steve, Gary and I went back inside.

By now the motel had a generator going and a TV was on in the candle-lit lobby. Newscasters reported the ill-fated plane to be Flight 255, bound from Detroit to Phoenix. It was reported a 3-year-old child, Cecilia Cichan, had survived the crash that killed her parents and brother.

The TV newsmen speculated widely about the cause of the tragedy (months later investigators blamed it on the flight crew failing to deploy the plane's flaps for takeoff).

Motel guests crowded a small bar in the lobby to order drinks.

"We can serve beer when we get the cash registers back on," said the barmaid. "But no liquor—we’re so new we don’t have our license yet."

By now the motel owner had arrived. He was a hairy, heavy-set man with thick, muscular arms. Wearing an undershirt, he looked like a Russian weightlifter.

"Give drinks to them," he ordered the barmaid. "Forget the cash register. Forget the license."

"But…" she protested.

"I said give it to them," he repeated firmly.

A line had formed to use the pay phones.

Awaiting her turn was a young woman, sobbing uncontrollably as she clutched a Yellow Pages phone book to her chest.

The motel owner approached her.

"Can I help you, young lady?" he asked.

"I’m a Northwest flight attendant," she said between sobs. "I had friends on that plane. I’m trying to locate the nearest hospital so I can go and give blood for this emergency."

This fierce-looking man took the young woman into his arms and softly stroked the back of her head.

Then, gently as possible, he told her that a donation of blood couldn’t help anyone on Flight 255.

Another young woman, carrying a baby, appeared in the lobby. She was desperate to make a phone call.

"My car stalled just down the road," she said. "I left it there and came up here to get help. I’m pretty sure the plane crashed onto my car.

"I’ve got to let my family know my baby and I are safe."

A man in the phone line let the young mother make a call before he did.

It was a night when strangers exchanged consoling words and kindnesses.

Upon boarding a plane the next morning to fly to Charlotte I found myself seated next to an elderly woman. She carried a Bible and she was shaking.

"Are you scared?" she asked.

I told her I was, but offered the reassurance that another crash happening was beyond the longest of odds.

"Would you hold my hand?" she asked.

I held her hand for the duration of the flight.

Back home, I received a phone call from a radio station in Phoenix.

A talk show host wanted me to share what I had seen.

"Most of the people on that plane were from the Phoenix area," she said. "The pain will endure in The Valley Of The Sun for a long time."

It has endured, I’m sure, elsewhere as well.

But the wreaths out there on Middlebelt Road are signs of some consolation.

Love endures, too.